Empires Apart

by Brian Landers

  To the colonists the British authorities and the British army were no longer their fellow Britons but agents of an occupying power. The colonists may still theoretically have been Britons, but they were second-class Britons. George Washington was horrified to discover in 1754, when he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the British army, that he would be paid less than British-born officers of the same rank.

  Although the majority of colonists undoubtedly chafed at their second-class status it is important not to over-emphasise the extent of discontent. As Niall Ferguson has written, ‘The Hollywood version of the War of Independence is a straightforward fight between heroic Patriots and wicked, Nazi-like Redcoats. The reality was quite different. This was indeed a civil war that divided social classes and even families. And the worst of the violence did not involve regular British troops, but was perpetrated by rebel colonists against their countrymen who remained loyal to the crown.’

  Around half of all the British colonies in the Americas did not rebel. One of the first actions of the Continental Congress was to place a trade embargo on the colonies that stayed loyal. Bermuda was particularly hard hit. The colony had been controlled by a group of oligarchs known as the ‘forty families’ since its establishment 130 years earlier. They had strong commercial links with the rebel leaders and a deal was soon reached. On 14 August 1775 two American ships anchored in Tobacco Bay, Bermuda, under cover of darkness and were loaded with barrels of gunpowder; ransom paid, the blockade was lifted. Thereafter Bermudian sloops regularly flouted the Royal Navy’s blockade to carry salt to Washington’s army. The far more populous and important Caribbean colonies, which were to be in the forefront of the fighting as the French captured island after island, stayed loyal, and Jamaica became a key base for the British navy. The rebels did capture and briefly hold the Bahamas.

  The bulk of the colonial population was on the mainland and here the call of the rebels was much more strongly heeded. Of the eighteen mainland colonies only five did not join the rebellion, although in New York loyalists were probably in a majority when the war started. Of the thirteen most developed colonies only Quebec stayed loyal. In the less developed colonies Georgia went with the rebels and Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, East and West Florida stayed loyal, but with such tiny populations they made no difference to the balance of power.

  Despite their widely different, indeed conflicting, interests the majority of the colonists rose up in rebellion. Initially they were united in their opposition to the crown but in little else; they needed a stronger glue to bind them together. That glue proved to be the ideology of democracy. The very first Continental Congress held in Philadelphia a year before the rebellion broke out, and including representatives of twelve of the eventual thirteen seceding colonies, adopted a lofty ‘Declaration of Rights and Grievances’ designed to grab the ethical high ground.

  The American War of Independence was the first war to be fought overtly for an ideology. The rebels were not fighting a nationalist war, as the concept of America as a nation did not yet exist, nor were they following charismatic leaders promising them wealth and glory. They were not even fighting for ‘freedom’ in the sort of practical sense that would have been understood by those fettered by the shackles of slavery; they fought for the ideology of what today is called democracy.

  (There is a danger in using the term ‘democracy’ as its meaning has changed considerably over the last two centuries. Many of the Founding Fathers of what today proudly calls itself the world’s leading democracy would have been horrified to be labelled democrats, a term that, especially after the French Revolution, implied an element of mob rule. As one eminent historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, has written, the clergy and political leaders of New England considered democracy to mean ‘terror, atheism and free love’, and they fought to ensure that America would not become ‘too democratic for liberty’.)

  The proclamation that above all others captured the spirit of the times, and has echoed through the centuries since, was adopted by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776. The Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, contains one of the most moving passages written in English, but much of it is tawdry, for example a caricatured attack on George III and a condemnation of the proposed boundary of the colony of Quebec. Congress made revisions to his draft, which upset Jefferson deeply; most famously his denunciation of aspects of the slave trade was deleted entirely at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia. After all that, however, there remain the few short lines that for millions have come to define the American dream. Jefferson’s words have transcended place and time to speak to generations the world over: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’

  Those two sentences encapsulated the ideology of a people throwing off the chains of old world authority to embrace the freedoms offered by a limitless frontier. Nothing could have been further from the ideology of autocracy so firmly rooted further east, where even as the Congress was debating Jefferson’s words Russian colonisers were pushing down the Volga, driven not by a yearning for freedom but by the command of their tsar.

  Jefferson’s stirring declaration was read out in pulpits, town halls and assemblies throughout the rebel areas and beyond. If ever a piece of paper captured the soul of a people this was it.

  The seed of American democracy was planted in the summer of 1776, but the ground had been prepared in the preceding months, largely by one of the most remarkable men of the eighteenth century.

  Thomas Paine and Tadeusz Kosciuszko

  Thomas Paine was an Englishman who had arrived in the colonies two years earlier at the age of thirty-seven. In a pamphlet entitled Common Sense he set forth the case for American independence in blunt and persuasive terms:

  I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, that the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert, that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat.… I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independence; I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of that is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity, – that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth.

  Much of the pamphlet now seems dated, and some has proved simply wrong. ‘Nothing but independence’, he wrote, ‘can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars.’ But at the time Common Sense was an instant bestseller; half a million copies were printed, galvanising republican sentiment throughout the colonies and later throughout Europe. Paine inspired a political fervour, providing a ferment of new ideas and a resounding call to arms only matched since by Karl Marx.

  At the time the American rebels proclaimed that they were fighting for ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’. When the term ‘democracy’ later came to summarise the cause, this was to some extent rewriting history. Men like Thomas Paine were indeed fighting for democracy – for representative government, free speech and personal liberty – but many of the rebels had a much more limited definition of freedom. Their objective was freedom from Britain, national liberation. Particularly in the southern colonies the aspirations for democracy were viewed with deep suspicion; the ruling elites had no intention of sharing power with the common man. The enslavement of blacks, eradication of natives and disenfranchisement of women were simply taken for granted.

  (It is another
oddity of history that the American Rebellion led to women getting the vote for the first time in history – not in America but in Africa. Many slaves who had fought for the British escaped to Nova Scotia from where they were settled in the new African colony of Sierra Leone and, irrespective of gender, given the vote in 1793.)

  Some colonists rebelled precisely because they did not believe that all men are created equal. In June 1772 Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the king’s bench in London, made a ruling in the case of James Somersett that sent shudders of apprehension across the southern colonies. Somersett was a slave who had been taken to England and had then run away; he was recaptured, but Mansfield ordered his release because, he declared, slavery was fundamentally ‘odious’. The decision outlawed slavery in England. Seven months later the courts in Boston were asked to rule that the Mansfield decision should apply to the American colonies. They declined to do so, but many in the south had an uneasy premonition of the way British opinion might move.

  The issue of slavery divided the northern and southern colonies from the very beginning. It is difficult today to understand how deeply entrenched slavery was in the moral mindset of most of the south. It was not the case that a few greedy slave owners were ignoring the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights for their own selfish purposes. When it became apparent that an influential part of northern opinion was pushing for slavery to be outlawed in the new nation, petition upon petition circulated in the south expressing indignation in the most graphic terms: emancipation would mean ‘The horrors of rapes, murders and outrages’ along with ‘Want, poverty, distress and ruin to free citizens, neglect, famine and death to the black infant’. Appeals were made to God, as the Old Testament apparently showed that ‘slavery was permitted by the Deity himself’, and to the Bill of Rights, which southerners held protected the property rights they exercised over their slaves. As one petition asserted, ‘We have sealed with our blood title to the full free and absolute enjoyment of every species of our property,’ by which the petitioners meant their slaves. Of particular concern were the slaves liberated by the defeated British army, who now had the temerity to demand the rights of free men. The proponents of slavery were every bit as scathing in the denunciation of the abolitionists as their Quaker and Puritan opponents were of them. ‘No language can express our Indignation, Contempt and Detestation of the apostate wretches,’ said one pro-slavery petition in words that could have easily come from the other side.

  Not only were there enormous differences between southern and northern colonies, differences which within a century would erupt in civil war, but even within these groups tensions ran high. A collection of thirty-six towns on the borders of New York and New Hampshire declared themselves an independent country in 1777 under the name New Connecticut. George Washington had to use his personal authority to prevent the armed invasion of the fledgling republic that was urged on him by congressional resolutions. (Once the war was over the independent ‘nation’, by now renamed, applied for admission to the Union but still met vigorous opposition: only the payment of a $30,000 settlement to the state of New York enabled Vermont to become the fourteenth US state.)

  The inhabitants of Vermont might not have wanted to be part of New York or New Hampshire, but they wanted to be free of the British yoke. One of the strengths of the rebel ideology was that terms like liberty could be so inspiring while remaining so nebulous. Under the banner of freedom congregated not only colonists of sharply different political hues but also idealists from all over Europe. The most famous was the French Marquis de Lafayette. First as a volunteer with George Washington’s forces and then as a French officer, Lafayette played a key role in the eventual American victory. His efforts were clearly in the French national interest, but he was also fired by a genuine commitment to liberty. (Oddly, the man who supposedly encouraged him to join the American rebels was George III’s younger brother, who had left Britain after making an ‘inappropriate’ marriage.)

  The twentieth century saw men from all walks of life abandon their homes to fight as foot soldiers with the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War or the mujahaddin in Afghanistan but the international volunteers in America, although some of them motivated by the same sort of ideological fervour, were very different. Many of them were part of a military elite that moved easily across borders and bonded quickly with the new American officer class. American representatives in France were instructed to hire mercenaries from the French army and navy, especially artillerymen and engineers. Encouraged by their government, dozens of French officers joined the American forces. Mercenary soldiers were a common feature of warfare in the period. Among the French army volunteers was the Bavarian Johan Kalb, who became a major-general and died heroically at the battle of Camden and the Irishman Thomas Conway, who also became a major-general in the revolutionary army but fell out with George Washington and was eventually wounded in a duel with one of Washington’s supporters. (Conway returned to France in disgrace but rose to become governor of the French colonies in India.) Such men worked for whoever paid them and were as likely to offer their services in support of oppression as of freedom. As the Marquis de Lafayette returned to France from his successful defence of democracy the Comte de Langéron was leaving France to spend a lifetime successfully defending autocracy. Not only did Langéron fight for the Russian tsar against the Swedes and Turks but he also led his infantry corps all the way to Paris in the war against Napoleon. (He eventually became a count of the Russian empire, military governor of various newly conquered regions in the south and commander-in-chief of an elite Cossack ‘host’.)

  As an illustration of how value-laden vocabulary can colour historical perceptions, the mercenaries who fought on the rebel side are usually referred to as ‘volunteers’, the term ‘mercenaries’ being reserved for the troops George III recruited from his family’s native Germany. To picture these foreign ‘volunteers’ as champions of liberty may be naïve, but some, like Lafayette, undoubtedly were. The Venezuelan professional revolutionary Francisco de Miranda was another.

  One idealist even more important than Lafayette in terms of later European history was Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the son of a minor Polish noble who had trained at the military academies in Warsaw and Versailles. Kosciuszko had travelled extensively in western Europe before returning to Poland in 1774, where he became the tutor to the daughter of a Polish general. What happened next is unclear, but it would appear the couple tried to elope; only Kosciuszko got away. Returning to France he was caught up in the same idealistic fervour as Lafayette and set sail for America. There his skills as a military engineer were immediately recognised, and he played a key role in the rebel victory, eventually becoming one of Washington’s senior generals. Among other things he organised the siege of Charleston that broke British power in the southern colonies. Thomas Jefferson remarked that ‘He was as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.’ It was a judgement many Poles came to share when he returned home to continue the fight against imperialism – this time battling an altogether stronger foe, Catherine the Great of Russia.

  Although men like Lafayette and Kosciuszko provided the military skills that the fledgling American army desperately needed, it was the inspirational ideology of Thomas Paine that motivated the rebel forces and provided the political certainties that have endured to this day.

  When Paine arrived in the colonies success both for the rebels and for himself must have seemed unlikely. In England Paine had been a failure: failing in marriage (twice), failing as a corset-maker and finally dismissed as a troublemaker from his role as a customs officer. His only success had been to attract the attention of Benjamin Franklin, who helped him make his way in Pennsylvania. Paine produced numerous propaganda pieces during the war and also wrote stirringly in condemnation of slavery and in affirmation of the rights of women. In 1781 he travelled to France and returned with money and weapons for the insurgents. All the profits from his writings he gave to the rebel cause, but when he p
etitioned Congress for financial assistance after the war he was turned down.

  In 1791, by which time he had returned to England, Paine wrote his masterpiece The Rights of Man, in support of the French Revolution and denouncing poverty and war. This work attracted so much controversy that he was forced to flee to France. There he was initially welcomed, but when he opposed the execution of Louis XVI he was imprisoned. He eventually returned to America, but discovered that his last great book, The Age of Reason, with its plea for religious toleration, had destroyed his reputation there. Americans were not ready to tolerate any religion but their own. Paine, already in poor health, slumped into alcoholism and died in New York in 1809.

  With the writing of Common Sense Paine crystallised an ideology that would remain permanently ingrained in the psyche of America. Not only was it the ideology of democracy; it was the ideology of an all-encompassing democracy. In the introduction to his pamphlet Paine included a simple sentence that was to be profoundly significant: ‘The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind.’ He was advocating a new form of government not just for thirteen rebel colonies but as a model for the world. Paine was convinced, as succeeding generations of Americans have been convinced, that American democracy is a fundamentally better form of government than any other, and that because it is better it should be universal.

  The American Rebellion was an ideological war, and ideologies are universal. The rebels convinced themselves that they were fighting for a better world in which nothing that needed to be improved could not be improved. They had a totalitarian zeal to transform everything around them – even the language they spoke and wrote. In the middle of the war John Adams, who would become America’s second president, took time out to campaign for an academy to ‘correct’ and ‘improve’ the English language. (The American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres was finally set up in 1820, presided over by Adams’s son, America’s sixth president, but had virtually no impact.)